


scrapyard boys and sunshine days

by Origamidragons



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Missing Scene, Pre-Canon, Water 7, copious overuse of dramatic irony, look they COULDVE MET
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22346503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origamidragons/pseuds/Origamidragons
Summary: He chewed his lip for a moment, then stuck out his hand, filthy with dirt and engine grease like all the rest of him. “I’m Franky.”The red haired boy grabbed his hand without hesitation, and shook it enthusiastically. “Hi, Franky! My name’s Shanks! I’m a pirate!”(Or: When he's ten and when he's thirty-four, Franky meets a boy with a straw hat and a sunshine smile.)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 228





	scrapyard boys and sunshine days

“Whatcha making?” a voice asked, bright and cheerful and right next to his ear, and Franky startled and dropped the wrench, jerking around.

The boy who’d been peering over his shoulder looked a few years older than him- twelve or thirteen, maybe. He was wearing a straw hat that looked a little battered but shone like gold in the sunlight, crowning a messy head of bright red hair. He was with the pirate crew that had arrived earlier that day, Franky remembered. Tom’s friends.

Franky looked at him suspiciously for a moment. “Why?”

“I’m curious!” the boy said, standing up on his tiptoes and leaning around him to get a better look at his workbench. “It looks cool!”

Franky hesitated a moment longer, but the casual compliment wrung enough goodwill out of him that he sidled over a step to make room. His workbench was less a workbench and more a repurposed fragment of decking, but it served its purpose well enough. At the moment, it was cluttered with pieces of metal, some welded together and many others haphazardly scattered about.

“ _Cool!_ What is it?” the red-haired boy asked, tipping his head to the side and squinting at the mess, like if he looked at it at the right angle some pattern would eventually slide into focus.

“It’s not anything _yet_ ,” Franky said, scowling briefly at the inadvertent reminder. “But _eventually_ ‘s gonna be a cannon. I’m making a _battleship_.”

“A battleship?” the red-haired boy echoed. “That’s _awesome_! So hey, you work here? Are you a shipwright too?”

Franky puffed up in pride a little bit, unable to stop himself from boasting. “Yeah! I’m Tom’s pro-te-gee. Or, one of ‘em,” he added in a rushed mumble before returning to normal volume. “He’s teachin’ me everything he knows and someday I’m gonna be the best shipwright in the world!”

“In the whole world?” the red-haired boy asked, wide-eyed, and he didn’t laugh when he said it.

“In the whole world!” Franky said decisively. He chewed his lip for a moment, then stuck out his hand, filthy with dirt and engine grease like all the rest of him. “I’m Franky.”

The red haired boy grabbed his hand without hesitation, and shook it enthusiastically. “Hi, Franky! My name’s Shanks and I’m a pirate!”

Franky squinted at him doubtfully. “You don’t really look like a pirate,” he said. “You look like a kid. Like me.”

Shanks scowled. “Hey! I’m a real pirate!”

“Yeah? What’d’ya do on the ship, then?”

Shanks folded his arms and muttered something.

Franky blinked and leaned a little closer. “What?”

“I said I’m a _cabin boy_ ,” Shanks mumbled.

Franky snorted.

“Hey! Shut up!” Shanks said, elbowing him. “You’re like, seven, you don’t know anything.”

“ _You_ shut up, I’m ten!” Franky snapped, shoving him back, and Shanks tripped backwards over a twisted spur of metal and they both went down in a clumsy tangle of limbs, shoving and kicking.

A moment later, as if summoned by the crash, another head, this one indigo-haired and wrapped in a bandana, popped up from behind the nearest scrap pile. “Oi! Franky! Don’t start fights!”

Franky managed to twist around and yell, “I’m _not!_ Shove off!” before going back to ineffectively trying to kick Shanks’s ribs in. It probably would have worked better had he been wearing shoes, but it was Franky’s philosophy that shoes (and long pants, and shirts most of the time) just got in the way.

Iceberg muttered something exasperated under his breath that Franky didn’t hear, and then vaulted over the crown of the scrap pile with practiced ease and skidded down the side. He hooked an arm around Franky’s chest and pried him free with little apparent difficulty, much to Franky’s irritation.

“Leg _go_ , Icebrain!” Franky yelled, flailing against the hold. “Lemme go lemme _go!_ ”

Iceberg ignored him, turning to where Shanks was pulling himself up to a sitting position in the dirt. “I’m very sorry about him,” he said, and then smacked Franky across the back of the head with his free hand. “Don’t pick fights with customers!”

Franky huffed and folded his arms. “We weren’t _fighting_. We were making friends.”

“Yeah!” Shanks chirped from where he was still on the ground. There was a dark blur of oil smeared high on one cheek, his hair a ruffled mess, and he was still grinning sunshine-bright. “I like Franky. He’s funny.”

“ _Still_ ,” Iceberg said crossly, pressing a thumb between his eyes like Franky and Shanks’s combined presences alone were enough to give him a migraine. “One of these days you'll get into it with someone who wants to actually _hurt_ you!”

Franky just glared sullenly back at him until the older boy sighed in surrender and glanced back at Shanks. “Nice to meet you, by the way. I’m Iceberg.”

“I’m Shanks!” Shanks said. “So are you Franky’s brother?”

There was a beat of silence.

“What,” Iceberg said, looking absolutely horrified, at the same time that Franky yelled, “No _way!_ ” with a matching expression of disgust.

“ _Absolutely_ no relation-”

“-already annoying _enough_ , can’t even _imagine_ -”

“-the hair is just a coincidence-”

“-the actual _worst_ -”

Shanks just laughed, grinning bemusedly and glancing back and forth between the two of them as they talked frantically over each other, before all of a sudden freezing and bringing his hands up to pat at his head. “Ah!”

Franky and Iceberg both paused mid-sentence at the exclamation, glancing over. “What?” Franky asked.

“My hat!” Shanks said, digging his fingers into his hair- and now that he mentioned it, Franky registered that the old straw hat he’d been wearing when he’d first introduced himself was nowhere to be seen.

Iceberg frowned, looking thoughtful. “Must have got knocked off in the tussle… I’m sure it’s around here somewhere.”

“I need to find it!” Shanks finally shoved himself to his feet, glancing frantically around.

Franky finally succeeded in squirming out of Iceberg’s grip, stomping hard on his foot and ducking under his arm. “What’s so special about it? ‘s just a hat. You can get another one.”

“No! It’s _special_ , it was a present from my captain!” Shanks protested, actual distress clear in his voice. “I can’t lose it!”

“We’ll help you find it,” Iceberg said easily, making a calming motion with one hand. “It must’ve gotten picked up by the wind, but it still can’t be that far.”

They split up, scattering to cover more ground. The scrapyard was big and messy, sprawling out in all directions from the base of the bridge, but Franky figured a bright yellow hat tied with a red ribbon was bound to stand out against all the endless black and brown and grey.

A flicker of something moving towards the top of one of the taller scrap heaps caught his eye, and he tilted his head back, pressing one hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the morning sun.

It was Shanks’ hat, lodged on a twisted bit of wood that looked as though it had maybe once been a forepeak. Iceberg had been right- it must have gotten caught in one of the strong winds off the ocean. Franky squinted a little bit and the heap of wood and metal slid into focus as the decimated front half of a long-dead ship, slanting at an angle up into the air, half-buried in other assorted scrap and garbage.

“Oi!” he yelled over his shoulder. “I found it! Hang on, gonna grab it!”

Without bothering to wait for the other two to catch up, he hoisted himself up onto a slanted fragment of what had once been a hull, and began to climb. The wood was dehydrated after years of rotting beside the ocean, and slightly rough with crusted salt. Franky had plenty of practice climbing over these wrecks and ruins, though, and he knew the tricks to it- knew to stick to the metal bits wherever possible, since they were less likely to give under his weight.

“ _Franky! Be careful, dumbass!_ ” he heard Iceberg’s voice holler up from the ground, nearly drowned out by Shanks’ enthusiastic cheering.

He grinned to himself and hauled himself up over a broken-off oar, pulled himself a few more feet along by a length of chain that had once looped around the deck, and was finally able to reach a hand out and snag the straw hat from its perch. The straw felt warm under his fingertips, like it had been drinking in the sun as it sat up there.

He needed both hands free to climb back down, so he set the hat on his own head for safekeeping, and started the descent. Once he was ten feet or so from the ground, he jumped, skidding down a tilted section of decking to tumble safely to the dirt. The hat’s rim flopped down over his eyes from the impact, and he scowled at the sound of Shanks’s laughter.

“Shut up!” he said as he shoved the brim back up, glaring up at him. “Or I won’t give it back!”

Rather gratifyingly, Shanks stopped laughing immediately, though his grin stayed. “Sorry!” he said. “Thanks for getting it back for me.”

Franky shrugged, pulled the hat off his head and shoved it at Shanks, who took it immediately and settled it back on his head in a gesture that looked almost habitual. The golden straw was marked with a fresh collection of faint, smudgy black fingerprints in oil and engine grease.

Iceberg sighed in relief before glancing up at the sound of Kokoro’s low, gravelly voice calling his name from across the scrapyard. “Ah, I said I’d help her with the shopping today,” he said, turning away. “Don’t get into any _more_ trouble while I’m gone.”

“Fuck off!” Franky yelled at his retreating back. “I never get into trouble!”

Iceberg snorted audibly, and waved without turning back.

“Bye! Thanks!” Shanks called after him, then returned to fussing with his hat, considering the blur of his reflection in a nearby steel panel, before turning around again.

“How do I look?” he asked with a grin.

“Dumb,” Franky said immediately. “What kinda pirate wears a straw hat, anyways?”

“Well, the Captain used to, and now he’s _king_ of the pirates,” Shanks said, unfazed by the insult.

“Huh,” Franky said, because he couldn’t really argue with that. “Izzat why you wear it, then? To be a great pirate?”

“Nope!” Shanks said cheerfully, then frowned. “Well, I’m gonna do that too! For sure! But the hat is different. Captain asked me to keep it safe for him.”

“Safe?” Franky repeated, brow furrowing. “Didn’t you say he’s like, the best pirate ever? What’s _he_ gotta be scared of?”

Shanks hesitated, then sat down on the ground next to Franky, leaning against the slanted section of deck. “Can I tell you a secret?” he asked. “You gotta promise not to tell. Really, _really_ promise.”

“Promise,” Franky said, leaning a little closer, curious despite himself.

Shanks bit his lip, then said, “Captain’s dying.”

Franky’s head jerked up. Whatever he’d been expecting, it certainly hadn’t been _that_. “What?”

Shanks nodded, and ducked his head, the brim of the straw hat hiding his eyes. “He’s sick, the kind that there’s no chance of getting better from. He’s trying to hide it, and he acts the same as ever, but the whole crew knows. Nobody wants to talk about it.”

He pulled his legs up to his chest, frowned down at his knees. “This is gonna be our last voyage,” he said. “We’re going all the way to the end of the Grand Line, all the way to the last island, and then… that’s it. There’ll be no more Roger Pirates. Everybody will just… go their separate ways. Like none of it ever happened. Like we didn’t turn the whole world upside down.”

Shanks brought a hand up to fiddle with the slightly frayed brim of the straw hat. “So… so that’s why I gotta keep his hat safe. Cause he asked me too, and he trusted me, and soon he’s not gonna be around anymore, so I gotta. Okay?”

Franky just nodded, looking down at the dirt between his feet. “Okay,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. “I get it.”

Shanks glanced over at him. “You do?”

Franky thought about Tom, and his big hugs and bigger laugh and about how he’d feel if Tom was all of a sudden not there anymore, and nodded. “Yeah.”

The silence that fell around them at that was uncertain but not uncomfortable, and after a moment Shanks nudged Franky. “Hey. Y’know what?”

Franky looked up. “What?”

“In a couple years, I’m gonna start my _own_ pirate crew,” Shanks said, “and live free on the sea! You should come with!”

Franky blinked twice. When he looked again, Shanks’s smile hadn’t given an inch. “ _...what?_ ”

“You should join my pirate crew!” Shanks said. “I mean, someday in a couple years, once we’re older an’ everything. You can be our shipwright!”

Franky scowled, shaking his head vehemently and leaning away. “No way! I don’t wanna be a pirate!”

Shanks frowned. “Why not?” he asked, looking genuinely puzzled. “Pirates are freer than anyone! They can go wherever they want and do whatever they want and nobody can ever tell them what to do. It’s the best life there is!”

“Yeah, well,” Franky glared at the ground, hands balling up into fists, fingernails scratching at the dirt. “That’s- not always a good thing, y’know. Being able to just, _leave_ , whenever you want, and- _abandon_ anything you _don’t_ want.”

“Oh,” Shanks said, a funny note in his voice, and then, after a long pause, “Is that what happened to you?”

Franky hunched his shoulders higher, and didn’t say anything.

“Sorry,” Shanks said, quieter.

“S’fine,” Franky mumbled. “I’m fine.” When Shanks didn’t say anything, he repeated more vehemently, “I’m _fine_. An’ it was a long time ago, anyways. I don’t even remember ‘em.”

“Still. Sorry.”

“Whatever.”

“But… there’s good pirates too, y’know,” Shanks said. “I mean, I know, there’s a lotta selfish assholes out there, but… a lotta good people, too! Like my crew!”

“...maybe,” Franky said reluctantly. “I mean. _You’re_ not bad. For a pirate. I guess. Maybe.”

“Don’t strain yourself,” Shanks said, laughing. Franky rolled his eyes and elbowed him, but he was grinning, too.

“Shut up,” he said. “I’m still never gonna be a pirate, though. Never _ever_.”

Shanks shrugged. “Suit yourself, I guess. Too bad, though. I think you’d be a great pirate!”

“Yeah?” Franky said. “Well, you’d be a _terrible_ shipwright.”

“ _Hey!_ ”

Franky snorted with laughter at the offended look on the other boy’s face, and Shanks punched his shoulder and pouted.

In two years there would be an execution in Loguetown and a trial in Water Seven and nothing would ever be the same, but for right now there was just laughter and sunlight, and smudged fingerprints on a straw hat, and the ever-present music of waves against the shore.

* * *

“Hey, Franky! Whatcha making?” a familiar voice asked, bright and cheerful and right next to his ear.

“Huh? Oh, heya, Luffy,” Franky said with a welcoming grin, automatically stepping aside so his captain could squirm under his arm and get a look at his workbench. The table was wide and smooth, neatly organized with a stack of blueprints weighted down in one corner. Sitting in the center was a half-finished contraption of glossy, shiny chrome.

“I’m workin’ on an upgrade for Sunny’s cannons,” he explained, picking up the half-built machine and passing it over for Luffy to examine. Letting Luffy handle an invention for a couple minutes was a fantastic durability test. “I think I can get us more range and power if I can find a way to automatically compress the gunpowder for a bigger explosion. Marine ship stalking us, they think they’re outta range, and then BANG! Super, right?”

“That’s so _cool!_ ” Luffy said, bouncing in place. “You’re so cool, Franky. I’ve got the best shipwright in the whole world.”

Franky grinned. “The whole world, huh?”

“The whole world!” Luffy confirmed enthusiastically, and for a single stuttering second Franky was looking at a different boy with a worn straw hat and a grin like sunshine.

He blinked, and it was just Luffy again, and for a moment he could imagine a scattering of engine-grease fingerprints on the crown of his hat, long since cleaned away by the years.

“Hey… Luffy,” he said. “Did I ever ask where you got that hat of yours?”

**Author's Note:**

> It just occurred to me outta nowhere that these two absolutely could have met and been friends and then before I knew it I had two and a half thousand words honestly I dunno what happened
> 
> I _think_ I got the ages right (Franky's ten here, Shanks is thirteen, Iceberg is fourteen)- but if I didn't please don't tell me. It's also possible Franky should maybe still be going by Cutty Flam at this point in time but. I don't care. I cannot make myself write a whole story using that name so we'll say he introduces himself at least to other kids as Franky.


End file.
